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Summary Information

Abstract

The collection is composed primarily of ledgers used in the
operation of the New York Juvenile Asylum, a reception center, home, and placement
agency for orphaned, abandoned, and impoverished children. The Asylum operated in
Manhattan from 1853 until 1905 when it moved to a rural campus in Dobbs Ferry, New York.
In 1920 the Asylum was renamed Children's Village. The collection provides copious
information about the experience of poor and orphaned children, children sent West on
"orphan trains," social work, and the home life and living arrangements of poor and
immigrant New Yorkers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The Medical Logs (Box 85, Folders 2-5 and Box 95, folder 1) are
restricted.
Researchers wishing to use the Medical Logs
first must sign a nondisclosure form certifying that they will not publish, or in any
way disseminate, names or personally-identifiable information from the Medical Logs.
This collection is located on-site.
More information »

This collection is arranged in four series.

Description

Scope and Content

This collection consists primarily of ledgers used for record keeping at the New York
Juvenile Asylum and Children's Village. The collection of ledgers, while large, is also
fragmentary and represents a minority of the total volume of records NYJA produced. The
majority of the ledgers document the movement of children through the asylum system,
from arrival at the House of Reception to discharge to family or apprenticeship in the
West. The ledgers also concern financial operations, committee minutes, and daily
operations at the Asylum in Manhattan as well as the Dobbs Ferry Children's Village
campus. Correspondence copybooks contain onionskin paper impressions of letters
regarding institutional operations. Several of the ledgers contain papers and
correspondence interleaved with the bound pages. Many are in fragile condition. A small
number of reports and papers from a 1931 institutional survey are also included.

This series contains ledgers pertaining to the overall operation of the New York
Juvenile Asylum and Children's Village. The ledgers comprise minutes,
correspondence, and financial records. The minutes do not provide a complete
record of institutional operation. The correspondence is recorded in copybooks on
onionskin and primarily dates to the early twentieth century. The ledger of
Admissions, Indentures, and Discharge correspondence contains many original
letters interleaved with copies. The financial records also largely consist of
copies on onionskin. The Reports of Costs to City and State list the numbers of
children housed at the institution each month and were used to collect public
funds from the city and state.

The General Operation Records form the heart of this collection and pertain to the
movement of children though the asylum system. Many of these records contain
unique case numbers that were assigned to each child.

The Registers of Children list the age and important characteristics of new
arrivals at the House of Reception, such as race, religion, language spoken, and
name and address of parents. These records reveal that NYJA housed Catholic and
Jewish, as well as Protestant children, and admitted African-American and
immigrant youth. Most of these registers contain case numbers and information
about the eventual fate of the child: if she was sent to the Asylum, home to
family, or out West as an apprentice. Some unusual cases are marked with
additional notes.

Social workers created Home Visit Records when they visited the families of
children living in the Asylum to determine whether those families could provide a
fit home for children. These visits were conducted for children living in the
Asylum who had families with a known address. These ledgers do not all follow the
same format. Some contain an Admission form and Discharge form on facing pages. A
social worker filled out the first of these forms when a child was removed from
his home. The facing, Discharge, form was filled out when a child returned home,
sometimes years later. Where noted, some ledgers contain only Admission or only
Discharge forms. In these cases, each individual page was dedicated to a single
child and only contains information about the condition of that child's home,
either when she was admitted to NJYA, or when she was released to her family. The
ledgers provide a wealth of detail about home life and living arrangements among
poor and immigrant New Yorkers in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

Parent Surrender Forms were used when parents or family members relinquished
control of their children to the institution. These are brief forms and contain
little more than children's names and the names and signatures (or marks) of the
parents.

Apprentice Records kept track of older children indentured to homes in the West.
The records contain information about the lives and experiences of these children
and the families who took them in. Indentured children and the families who housed
them reported their progress and satisfaction with placement regularly. The NYJA
maintained contact with these children until they reached adulthood, and sometimes
afterward, if formerly indentured children remained in contact. The Apprentice
Records therefore give an excellent overview of the experience of “orphan train”
children.

Transfer Slips record where children were sent (usually to the NYJA) after
arriving at the House of Reception.

Applications for Discharge were required of all parents and guardians wishing to
retrieve their children from the asylum. The forms record how fit the applicants
are to care for a child and whether discharge was granted or denied. Most of the
children applied for were discharged to their guardians.

This series contains records of daily activity in the NYJA and Children's Village, including visitor's registers, daily events, runaways, and medical and school records. They offer a fragmented but illuminating glimpse into daily operations at the institution.

Physicians' Certificates certified that children who entered the asylum system were in good physical and mental health and free of infectious diseases. Inspecting doctors could record any health problems that were present. Almost all the children were found to be healthy and given a clean bill of health.

The Doctor's Orders Books and Medical Logs were kept at the Children's Village infirmary. The former records medical treatments prescribed by physicians and the latter lists the complaints of children who visited the nurse each day.

The bulk of this series consists of a 1931 New York University study of Children's Village, along with papers and plans for new buildings on the campus. These documents were produced as part of an initiative to modernize the curriculum to reflect current educational and therapeutic developments. The series also contains published pamphlets and programs reporting on the progress of Children's Village in the early twentieth century

Using the Collection

RBML

Access Restrictions

The Medical Logs (Box 85, Folders 2-5 and Box 95, folder 1) are restricted. Researchers wishing to use the Medical Logs
first must sign a nondisclosure form certifying that they will not publish, or in any
way disseminate, names or personally-identifiable information from the Medical Logs.
This collection is located on-site.

Restrictions on Use

Single photocopies may be made for research purposes. Permission to publish material
from the collection must be requested from the Curator of Manuscripts/University
Archivist, Rare Book and Manuscript Library (RBML). The RBML approves permission to
publish that which it physically owns; the responsibility to secure copyright permission
rests with the patron.

Preferred Citation

Identification of specific item; Date (if known); New York Juvenile Asylum records; Box
and Folder; Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University Library.

Subject Headings

The subject headings listed below are found in this collection. Links below allow searches at Columbia University through the Archival Collections Portal and through CLIO, the catalog for Columbia University Libraries, as well as ArchiveGRID, a catalog that allows users to search the holdings of multiple research libraries and archives.

History / Biographical Note

Historical Note

The New York Juvenile Asylum (NYJA) was founded in 1851 by a
group of prominent businessmen and professionals concerned about vagrancy among poor
children in New York City. The Asylum was designed to house, educate, reform, and find
placement for the numerous homeless and runaway boys and girls found daily on the
streets of New York. The founders conceived of the Asylum as a place for non-delinquent
children--an alternative to the punitive House of Refuge for young criminals. After
operating in Manhattan for over half a century, the NYJA moved to Dobbs Ferry, New York,
where it became a boy's school. In 1920, the institution was renamed Children's Village,
and it continues to operate under this name today.

From 1854 to 1905, NYJA occupied a large building in
Washington Heights on 176th Street between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues. The building was
the hub of a larger social services network that extended throughout New York City and
into the towns of the West. Children reached the Asylum in several ways. Many were found
vagrant or committing petty theft and were delivered to the NYJA by the police. Others
were removed from homes that were deemed unfit, and quite a few were surrendered by
parents or relatives too poor or too incapacitated to care for children. No matter their
origin, children first arrived at the House of Reception on West Thirteenth Street where
they were assigned a case number. After a few days assessment at the House of Reception,
staff sent appropriate cases uptown to the Juvenile Asylum, where children received six
hours of schooling a day as well as moral, religious, and vocational training.

Many of these children traveled to the West (on "orphan
trains") where they were indentured to farmers. The NYJA had a permanent agent stationed
in Illinois to assist in placing children with families. The Asylum kept track of the
children until they reached adulthood, sometimes corresponding with orphans and the
families with which they were placed for years. These materials provide abundant
information about the experience of "orphan train" children apprenticed to Western
states.

Not all children at the NYJA were truly orphans and many were
released to parents or family members after periods of financial difficulty had passed.
No records exist for these children after they were reunited with families.

At the dawn of the twentieth century, as new ideas about
social work spread though the United States, the building in Washington Heights began to
feel cramped and outdated. In 1901, the trustees of the NYJA held an architectural
design competition for a suburban facility to be built on a farm in Dobbs Ferry, twenty
miles north of Manhattan. The winning design featured a cluster of residential cottages
that quickly earned the nickname "Children's Village." The new facility had space for
less than a third of the youth who had lived in the Manhattan asylum. Before the 1905
move, female, African-American, Jewish, and Catholic children were sent home or to other
institutions. In 1920, during a reorganization that promoted a therapeutic model of
care, the institution's name was officially changed to "Children's Village." Children's
Village still operates as a treatment center and residential facility for boys in Dobbs
Ferry, New York.